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May 21, 2017--GILBERTSVILLE, Ky. – The Murray State University team of Zach Baker of Murray, Kentucky, and Micah Chessor of Paducah,Kentucky, won the YETI FLW College Fishing Central Conference tournament presented by Bass Pro Shops on Kentucky and Barkley lakes Saturday after weighing five bass totaling 19 pounds, 4 ounces. The victory earned the duo a $2,000 scholarship and an invitation to compete in the 2018 FLW College Fishing National Championship.

“This is an exciting win for our club – it’s nice to keep it in Kentucky,” said Baker, a senior majoring in Occupational Safety and Health. “It was a grind out there. We fought against some wind and waves, which definitely made things more tough. We just kept our heads down and fished.”

“We stayed on one ledge most of the day – a 70-yard stretch on the north-end of the lake at the mouth of Pisgah Bay,” said Chessor, a junior majoring in Wildlife Biology. “I found it in practice on Monday and the fish were stacked. I told Zach (Baker) that if we can get there first-thing Saturday morning, we’re going to stay there all day.”

“The ledge is basically a community hole,” said Baker. “The top of it is about 25 feet down and the bottom stretches to down about 30 feet. We just kept circling it and had a limit in the boat by 10:30 (a.m.), with our biggest fish coming in around 9:30.”

Baker said their biggest bass was caught on a Tennessee Shad-colored Keitech Impact FAT Swimbait with a 1-ounce head. He said their remaining four were brought in using a drop-shot rigged 4½-inch Morning Dawn-colored Roboworm Straight Tail Worm.

“We caught eight or nine keepers throughout the day,” said Chessor. “I caught some vertically out of the grass with the worm, and casted at them as well.”

“Patience was crucial for us,” said Baker. “We would hit a flurry of bites for around 45 minutes and then it would die off for around an hour. We just had to keep our focus and trust our instinct.”

This YETI FLW College Fishing Central Conference event at Kentucky and Barkley lakes was the second regular-season qualifying tournament of 2017 and was hosted by the Kentucky Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau. The next event for Central Conference anglers is their regular-season finale, scheduled for Oct. 7 on the Mississippi River in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

YETI FLW College Fishing teams compete in three regular-season qualifying tournaments in one of five conferences – Central, Northern, Southern, Southeastern and Western. The top ten teams from each division’s three regular-season tournaments, along with an additional qualifier for every 10 teams over 100 that compete, along with the top 20 teams from the annual YETI FLW College Fishing Open will advance to the 2018 FLW College Fishing National Championship.

College Fishing is free to enter. All participants must be registered, full-time students at a college, university or community college and members of a college fishing club that is recognized by their school.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (April 2, 2015) – College teams from across the country will be heading to Lake Murray in Columbia, South Carolina, April 16 – 18 for the 2015 FLW College Fishing National Championship presented by the Lowrance Insight Genesis College Cup. Fifty college bass fishing duos will be competing for a top award of a Ranger Z117 with a 90-horsepower outboard and entry into the 2015 Forrest Wood Cup, the world championship of bass fishing.

According to reigning Forrest Wood Cup champion Anthony Gagliardi, who won the championship on Lake Murray, it will be typical springtime fishing at its best. “This event will hit the lake right at the heart of the spawn and bass will be in all stages. We should see spawning, prespawn and postspawn bass all being caught.”

According to Gagliardi the best targets are going to be the pre and postspawn bass. Popular baits expected to be thrown will be spinnerbaits and swimbaits. He went on to say that depending on the weather, herring-spawn topwater baits could play a factor as well.

“It’s not hard to catch fish on Murray but the one thing teams are going to have to be careful of is getting sucked into a pattern that is producing fish, but not the right size fish,” Gagliardi continued. “It’s hard to move when you’re catching 2-pound fish cast after cast after cast. But those are not the fish that are going to win the tournament. Teams are going to have to move away from those areas to go and find the 4- to 5-pounders that they’ll need to make a difference.

“It’s going to be a fun tournament with a lot of fish caught. Teams are going to be competing for the same water so having multiple productive locations will be the difference between winning and losing.”

Gagliardi believes that teams are going to have to consistently bring in 18- to 20-pound sacks to become champion. Back-up plans are going to be clutch. He cautions that one spot will not carry them through the entire tournament to earn victory.

Anglers will take off from SCE&G North Recreation Area at Dreher Shoals Dam located at 2101 N. Lake Drive, in Columbia at 7 a.m. Weigh-in will be held adjacent to Carolina Stadium at Williams and Wheat Streets in Columbia beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 4 p.m. Saturday (or immediately following the end of the University of South Carolina baseball game). Takeoff and weigh-in are free and open to the public.

College Fishing is free to enter. All participants must be registered, full-time students at a college, university or community college and members of a fishing club recognized by their college or university.

“It’s a great feeling to win this tournament,” said Flack, a junior majoring in Civil Engineering. “FLW has some really tough competition, even at the college level. There are guys out here that will eventually be full-time professional fisherman.”

After two days of practice, the duo focused on fishing the grass in the Fish Pond Drain area near the south end of the lake.

“We found a couple of isolated pockets we could get in,” said Hurst, a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering. “The water was the right color and there was good grass, so we figured we would some find some prespawn fish.”

As temperatures rose throughout the day, the fish became more active which helped the team find their rhythm.

“We ended up catching most of our 12 fish on a White Trash-colored Reaction Innovations Skinny Dipper,” said Hurst.

“We tried some other baits like a Strike King KVD jerkbait and Strike King spinnerbaits,” added Flack. “But the Skinny Dipper is what ended up working the best in the shallower five-foot depths we were targeting.”

“Our goal coming into this tournament was to qualify for the Conference Championship,” said Hurst. “We’re very excited to continue fishing.”

The top 15 teams that advanced to the Southeastern Conference Championship tournament on Pickwick Lake are:

This FLW College Fishing Southeastern Conference tournament was hosted by the Bainbridge Convention & Visitors Bureau and was the first regular-season qualifying tournament in the Southeastern Conference. The next event for Southeastern Conference anglers is scheduled for May 2 at Lake Guntersville in Guntersville, Ala., and is hosted by the Marshall County Convention & Visitors Bureau.

FLW College Fishing teams compete in qualifying tournaments in one of five conferences – Central, Northern, Southern, Southeastern and Western. The top fifteen teams from each regular-season tournament will qualify for one of five Conference Championship tournaments. The top ten teams from each of the five Conference Championship tournaments will advance to the 2016 FLW College Fishing National Championship.

College Fishing is free to enter. All participants must be registered, full-time students at a college, university or community college and members of a fishing club recognized by their college or university.

HIAWASSEE, Ga. — With the 2014 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series National Championship complete, the University of North Carolina Charlotte team of Jake Whitaker and Andrew Helms have proven themselves the best collegiate team in the nation, but because only one angler can be crowned overall champion and earn a berth in the 2015 Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell out of Greenville, S.C., today begins the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Classic Bracket. Sunday the Top 4 teams will launch on Lake Chatuge in Hiawassee, Ga., to determine the winner-take-all champion in a head-to-head elimnation style bracket competition.

The teams, split up to fish individually from Nitro Z-8 boats are: Whitaker of UNC Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) and Robert Giarla of Tennessee Tech University; Zach Parker of Bethel University and Jackson Blackett of University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM); Brett Preuett of ULM and Matt Roberts of Bethel University; and Bentley Manning of Tennessee Tech and Helms of UNC Charlotte.

UNC CharlotteJake Whitaker
Hometown: Fairview, N.C.
Year: Senior
Degree: Civil Engineering
What would it mean to win? “There were 168 guys fishing the national championship, and to be the one that comes away from the bracket as a winner and Classic contender would be something no one has done before,” Whitaker said. “It would be a dream come true.”

Andrew Helms
Hometown: Monroe, N.C.
Degree: Marketing
What has this experience meant to you? “Getting to do participate in the championship, and now the bracket, has been a great experience,” Helms said.

Bethel UniversityZach Parker
Hometown: Jackson, Tenn.
Year: Senior
Degree: Biology
What would it mean to win? “I want to do it for my friends and family,” Parker said. “It would mean everything to earn a Classic berth.”

Matthew Roberts
Hometown: Pulaski, Iowa
Year: Senior
Degree: Biology
Do you have professional bass fishing aspirations? “Oh yeah,” Roberts said. “I’d like to, but there are a lot of financial obstacles.”

University of Louisiana MonroeBrett Preuett
Hometown: Alexandria, La.
Year: Graduated, with master’s in business
Degree: Business
What would it mean to win? “I think about it all the time; I don’t want to have an office job,” Preuett said. “I want to fish full-time and make it to the Classic.”

Jackson Blackett
Hometown: Monroe, La.
Year: Senior
Degree: Biology
Years on team: Four
What would it mean to win? “It would be unreal to win the bracket,” Blackett said. “It’d also be a good way to my foot in the door in the fishing industry — a life-changing experience.”

Tennessee TechBentley Manning
Hometown: Cookeville, Tenn.
Year: Junior
Degree: Fisheries
Do you have professional bass fishing aspirations? “Lord willing, if there’s way, I’d love to make a career out of fishing.” Manning said. “I do my best every time I go out there just to see if I can make it happen.”

“This is the first tournament we’ve entered into. We just formed out club in April so it’s a great way to start off,” said Worth.

“We’re so excited about this win,” said Kinkade, who used to play college baseball for Colorado Mesa University. “I’ve never even fished a lake that has shad in it before.”

"We had about two and a half days of practice,” said Worth. “In Colorado there’s nothing like this around us, so everything looked good. We found some deeper docks that had some big fish and ran around the lake and put in some waypoints on stuff we liked the look of. By the end of practice we had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do.”

The pair said that they fished several key docks at the beginning of the day and landed one big fish and lost a big fish before making the move that would secure their victory.

“Later in the morning we moved up to Honey Creek and fished an area that looked good in practice but that we hadn’t fished. We caught about 14 pounds in about 15 minutes,” said Worth.

“It was the opening to a deep creek that had a lot of shad,” Worth said of their key spot. “We were fishing a ledge that dropped from 15 to 18 feet and then dropped off into 35 feet. We were throwing a Delta Magic-colored ¾-ounce Pepper Custom Baits Pro Series Football Jig with a Big Texan-colored Berkley Havoc Pit Boss as the trailer. We caught some on black and blue-colored jigs, but brown and black seemed to do better.”

"We’re absolutely looking forward to the Invitational on Sam Rayburn,” Kinkade went on to say. “It is really exciting to be able to get down and fish these awesome lakes.”

FLW College Fishing teams compete in three qualifying events in one of five conferences – Central, Northern, Southern, Southeastern and Western. The top 15 teams from each regular-season tournament will qualify for one of five conference invitational tournaments. The top 10 teams from each conference invitational tournament will advance to the 2015 FLW College Fishing National Championship.

College Fishing is free to enter. All participants must be registered, full-time undergraduate students at a four-year college or university and members of a fishing club recognized by their college or university.